Kevin Nyklewicz, a deputy inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, reviews pension plan documents at his kitchen table. He was planning to retire March 10 until he was told the retirement office made a mistake.(Photo: RIck Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)Buy Photo

Kevin Nyklewicz says he is being held hostage by his employer: Milwaukee County government.

Thirteen months ago, on Feb. 1, 2016, the county retirement plan services office confirmed Nyklewicz, 52, would be eligible to retire and begin collecting his pension this month, documents show.

After staff in the office made errors in calculating the amount of the pension and then forgot to schedule his February appointment to sign the documents, everything appeared to fall into place in late February and the signing was rescheduled for March 1, he said. His last day was set for March 10.

The afternoon before the meeting, on Feb. 28, a staff member called to notify Nyklewicz that a mistake had been made and that he would not be eligible to retire for more than two years, in June 2019.

"I've been humiliated," Nyklewicz said, who acknowledged the public would not feel much sympathy for him, given the possibility of a taxpayer-funded retirement from the county at his relatively young age.

A litany of bureaucratic errors is the routine at an office now subject to a massive, independent audit. Former county retirement services director Marian Ninneman lost her job in early February after failing to correct an ongoing overpayment to one person that amounted to $140,000 over several years. She had been informed of the mistake three years earlier but ignored it.

Ninneman's departure came less than three months after the county paid out $11 million to make up for pension underpayments to nearly 1,300 retirees that started 15 years ago. Total payments for those mistakes ballooned to more than $14 million by the end of last year, records show.

After what happened to him, Nyklewicz is urging other county workers and retirees to publicly talk about their experiences with pension office mistakes.

Even so, employees of private companies likely would focus on the difference in benefits.

There is no question county pension plans are "more generous than what the private sector can afford," said Michael Francis, president and senior investment consultant of Francis Investment Counsel LLC in Brookfield.

"Private sector retirement plans generally don't allow distributions prior to age 62," Francis said. "It is unusual for folks in the private sector to have accumulated adequate wealth" to allow them to retire before age 60.

Francis offered this example: If you were working for a private employer and turned 65 today, you would need nearly $1 million to purchase an annuity that would pay you $5,000 a month until you die. Someone aged 55 would need a much larger fund to place into an annuity to receive that level of payments given how many more years they would be expected to live.

When he was told about the mistake, Nyklewicz, a Sheriff's Office deputy inspector for the county jail, questioned why the error on his retirement date was not caught for a year. In response, the office staffer said his case would be referred to the county attorney for review and he would receive a decision by March 3.

No call came that day.

On March 5, interim Corporation Counsel Margaret Daun informed him she had agreed to review his file and he would have a decision by March 17, one week after he had been planning to walk out the door.

"It shouldn't take two weeks to decide," an angry Nyklewicz said in an interview at his home. "That's scandalous." Pages and pages of retirement office correspondence and pension payment documents were spread out on the kitchen table.

"As of Friday, I'm going to be a hostage to Milwaukee County government," he said in reference to his planned retirement day.

"The county misled me every step," he said. "This is wrong."

Among the papers on the table is a Feb. 17 letter from Amy Pechacek, interim director of retirement plan services.

"Please accept my congratulations on your retirement," the letter says. Included in the mailing were the latest estimates of his monthly pension benefits.

"I was really excited to see that letter because I've worked a long time," Nyklewicz said.

He and his family had made plans for his life after March 10. "All those have come to a screeching halt," he said. "There's a lot of stress right now."

Pechacek did not respond to a request for an explanation of the mistake made in February 2016 in determining his retirement date.

Given the track record of mistakes made by retirement services before Pechacek was brought in, the county attorney's office is carefully reviewing Nyklewicz's file to make sure they get it right this time, said Melissa Baldauff, a spokeswoman for County Executive Chris Abele.

Nyklewicz became a sheriff's deputy in June 1994 and has served more than 22 years. A timeline of his career on the Sheriff's Office website states he was promoted to sergeant in 1999. Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. promoted him to captain in 2005. He was appointed a deputy inspector in 2009 and is now assigned to the jail.

Late last year, Milwaukee County auditors started a review of medical care records at the jail and House of Correction provided by a Florida company under contract to the county. Four people died at the jail in 2016 and those deaths remain under investigation.